SKELETON GOLD: Scorpion (James Pace novels Book 3)

by Andy Lucas

  In a state of shock, both men were struggling to come to terms with this horrendous turn of events.

  After surviving their rapid ascent from the wreck and subsequent decompression treatment, Pace had borrowed the ship’s helicopter and piloted it back to the military airfield they’d already used a couple of times. McEntire had despatched a private jet immediately that he had heard about the new notebook and they hadn’t had to wait long before the gleaming, red and white painted Falcon, put in an appearance.

  They expected to be back again in a few days, so left the helicopter secured in an empty hanger. Boarding the sleek jet, they took the opportunity to read every page of the notebook and discuss it, in between grabbing a few hours of much needed sleep. When they landed at London City Airport, on a clear, starry night, a car was waiting to whisk them to the McEntire building. Baker was their driver and Sarah came along as the welcoming committee. Feigning disgust, Hammond joined Baker up front, leaving the two lovers to snuggle together in the back.

  Their boss was waiting for them and his minder once again ushered them into his office, following it up with coffee before resuming her guard duty outside.

  The meeting was another sombre affair. They played down their close encounter with the sharks and focused instead upon the state of the wreck and the discovery of the hold, filled with crated gold.

  ‘Gutted to have lost those vials,’ said McEntire. ‘Has the secret been lost forever? Any chance we might find some of them undamaged, if we send down some diving teams?’

  Pace shook his head. ‘One of those sharks got a bit frisky, smashing the crate out of my hand. I saw all the vials crushed and broken before they sank, sorry.’

  ‘You did everything you could,’ Hammond backed him up. ‘Rather that old crate than my head,’ he grunted, fixing McEntire with a stern gaze.

  McEntire had worked with Hammond for years and recognised the look. It told him that the men across the desk were lucky to be alive.

  ‘We do have this notebook, though.’ Pace pulled it from the inside pocket of his black bomber jacket, sliding it across gently towards McEntire, who picked it up and immediately began flicking through the pages. ‘It tells us many things but the most important information it offers relates to the location of the other covert laboratories.’

  ‘Pringle’s diary gave us some good headings, speeds and bearings. We’ve already analysed them and extrapolated where necessary to give us a good idea of where to look for the other two.’ Sarah joined in, seated at Pace’s side, holding his hand tightly under the desk. The thought of James being anywhere near a killer shark terrified her.

  ‘These bases were hidden a century ago, in remote locations, only accessible by sea. Away from roads and railways, in undeveloped countries where the British Empire could run roughshod over the locals and set up whatever it wanted, well away from prying German eyes.’ Hammond spoke with conviction. ‘Finding them will require accurate geographical information.’

  ‘Which we now have?’ ventured Sarah.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So where are these other bases?’ asked McEntire, pouring himself some fresh coffee. He offered the pot around but everyone else declined, their cups still full.

  ‘One is in Antarctica. The other is in Uruguay. The submarine would sail from Plymouth to Uruguay, carry on south into the Ross Sea before sailing back up north to its final drop in Namibia. Then home, after several months at sea each time.’

  ‘So,’ McEntire breathed. ‘We have two more chances to find the rest of the lost gold and hopefully more vials, this time undamaged.’

  Hammond and Pace shot each other a knowing look. Pace cleared his throat. ‘No. There is only one of these bases that’s still undiscovered. Our only chance is Antarctica.’

  ‘Why not Uruguay?’ Sarah was intrigued. What did James know that made his statement so emphatic?

  ‘Simple,’ he explained, pausing to run his fingers through his short, dark hair. His eyes blazed with certainty. ‘The coordinates in Uruguay match a small cove, on a very rugged stretch of the coastline.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ butted in Hammond, ‘I spent the flight wired into the secure internet connection so conveniently installed in the Falcon. While James focused on gleaning any details he could about the whole operation, from the notebook, I concentrated on the two sets of coordinates.’

  ‘You found something interesting?’

  The accountant nodded. ‘The cove still exists but it has been developed into a commercial dock. The water is deep right up to the shore and can handle small, ocean-going ships. It’s been operating commercially for ninety-three years and under continual development during that period.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean the laboratory was found, not if it was well hidden,’ argued Baker, interjecting for the first time.

  ‘True,’ conceded Pace quietly, ‘but the interesting fact is that it has been owned by the same company for all that time. A family business that has grown and diversified over time. Nowadays, it is a large concern. Started by an Austrian named Roche.’

  ‘ARC? That can’t be!’

  ‘Unfortunately, it is very true. Sigerson Roche was the son of a German WW1 submariner and an Austrian factory worker. According to Uruguayan land registry, which has amazing online records you’ll be delighted to know, his father acquired what was considered a remote, worthless piece of coastline in the early 1920s and passed it on to his only son when he died.’

  Doyle McEntire understood immediately. ‘The sudden change of heart with Lefevre? Josephine Roche has recently come into a great deal of money, without any trace of where it came from.’

  ‘Yep, you’ve got it,’ said Pace. ‘If the gold we found in the hold of the K-45 is only one third of it, then she’s just found enough wealth to expand her company tenfold.’

  ‘This is just guesswork,’ argued Baker. ‘If they’ve owned the cove for nearly a century, why have they only found the gold now?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Pace flatly,’ but it’s too much of a coincidence to ignore.’

  ‘But if you are on the money, James, where does that leave us? Mr McEntire?’

  Where it left them was obvious. McEntire had finished the meeting at that point and started a long series of covert telephone calls, appropriately scrambled. It was now time to set his attack dogs on to ARC; the time for sniffer dogs was finished. He’d already tasked the Royal Navy with the job of salvaging the gold, after a personal conversation with a friendly Sea Lord. Using a privately hired salvage boat, crewed by naval personnel, and a team of specialist divers, they would easily recover every gold ingot.

  As ARC had blatantly sent their hired salvage ship to frighten off the Sea Otter, the Royal Navy was already on station, hoving over the horizon just before Pace had lifted the helicopter off the little ship’s helipad. Diverted from combat readiness exercises, several hundred miles away, it had run at full speed for twenty-four hours to ensure that nobody was tempted to interfere with McEntire’s vessel. Upon identifying the Type 23 frigate, lean and grey; bristling with multiple weapon systems, the skulking salvage ship had pulled up its anchor and scurried away.

  The rolling and pitching of the small lifeboat was growing worse but its rugged construction and fully covered design made it practically unsinkable. Pace strapped himself into the pilot’s seat and Hammond did likewise in a nearby passenger seat. Twice within five minutes it was capsized by a rogue wave but the specially placed ballast simply self-righted the boat and it carried on chugging into the wind.

  Pace was still bewildered at how an assault team ever got near to the ship, let alone managed to board it. The automatic weaponry should have sprung into action and shredded any aerial assault while it was still miles out and a seaborne attack would have been detected by sensitive sonar, surface radar and proximity alarms. Somehow, killers managed to bypass every security feature and appear, as lethal wraiths, in the early hours of the morning. Bearing silenced automatic we
apons, they had murdered with impunity, working their way through the ship from bow to stern, deck by deck.

  When the security team aboard finally woke up to the fact that they were under attack, and mounted a fierce resistance, their unsilenced SA80 rifles roused everyone who was still alive.

  Hammond and Pace had retired to their staterooms quite late. The sound of automatic gunfire stung them into rapid dressing, in jeans, jumpers and boots, almost crashing into each other in the passageway outside Pace’s room as they dashed topside. Hammond had a Walther P99 9mm pistol in his hand while Pace brought Barrett’s old .455 Webley to the party. Pace was very relieved that Sarah was safety back in London.

  The fighting was bloody, with bodies strewn around the deck. The ship handled the rough seas well, just as it had during the flash squall off the Skeleton Coast a fortnight before, but it still rolled and shifted noticeably. This put everyone in the battle off balance and made the job of killing the enemy that much more difficult.

  Stepping out into the icy wind and painful sleet, trusting each other without the need for words, the black-clad assault team members were obvious, moving as slickly as possible on the pitching deck. Move and fire, move and fire. Professional and ruthless, they were there to kill everyone.

  The ship’s crew fought valiantly, leaving a few of the assault team lying dead amongst their own, but they were no match for a carefully planned attack by at least fifty heavily armed men. Bullets smashed through flesh, bone and wood, ricocheting off metal. The chaos slowly grew quieter as the staccato rattle of the SA80s fell silent, one by one.

  Pace ran into two attackers out on the stern. They had just pumped a dozen bullets into one of the watch officers but had no time to revel in their deeds. Pace raised the heavy Webley and shot each one in the head, at close range. A brutal, powerful handgun, they were killed instantly.

  Scooping up their fallen weapons, which Hammond recognised as German Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles, they set upon the enemy hard, driving them back for a few minutes, adding another three corpses to the blood-slicked deck. It was never going to be enough though, and they knew they were just biding time while they thought of a way out. Being in the middle of the Ross Sea, over one hundred miles off the coast of Antarctica, there was only one choice. The lifeboats.

  The ship carried several free-fall lifeboats, on specially built rails, placed strategically around the perimeter. The closest one to them was back at the stern.

  ‘Lifeboat,’ Hammond barked, twisting around a metal bulkhead to pour a stream of lead towards an enemy concentration that was closing purposefully on them.

  ‘Okay,’ shouted Pace, sighting his own liberated weapon and being rewarded by the sight of his target twitching as the bullets slammed into his chest. He was probably wearing a bullet-proof vest, Pace knew, but it didn’t matter because the force of the multiple chest strikes sent the man flying over the railing, into the icy water. ‘Where have they come from?’ he yelled above the din. ‘How did they get on board?’

  Hammond pointed out into the darkness. Following his finger, Pace spotted the dark outline of a large ship, sitting a couple of thousand yards away. Showing no lights, it was practically invisible.

  ‘It will have shown up on our radar,’ shouted Pace, stopping to fire a few more shots towards the enemy. ‘What the hell is going on?!’

  ‘No time for that now,’ snapped Hammond. ‘This isn’t going to be pretty and it looks like most of our guys are already dead.’ Even if they managed to launch a lifeboat, they wouldn’t last long with that ship out there. Hammond made up his mind. ‘I’m going to the bridge,’ he yelled. ‘I don’t know why the ship’s defences haven’t kicked in but we can’t leave that other ship in one piece. We have to take it out.’

  ‘I’ve got your back,’ agreed Pace grimly. ‘Come on.’

  They were about to fight their way up the ship’s main deck when Hammond noticed the ship’s bow begin to swing around towards the blacked-out ship. Someone was still alive on the bridge, possible the captain himself, and had clearly come to the same conclusion as them. No sooner was the bow head on to the target than four torpedoes hissed away from their hidden tubes beneath the waterline, streaking across the ocean towards it.

  Three of them slamming home with vicious accuracy. Huge orange and black explosions lifted the ship up out of the water, broke its back and then slammed it down again in a thundering eruption of salt spray.

  Now all that Pace and Hammond needed to do was to get to a lifeboat station, which they managed in one piece. Hammond took both of the automatic rifles while Pace hurriedly climbed up the entrance ladder and made his way to the first seat he could, right next to the release lever. He hollered out for Hammond, who dropped the smoking guns and threw himself up the ladder, diving inside and grabbing hold of the nearest seat back.

  ‘Go!’

  Any marine safety officer would have had a fit at launching a free-fall lifeboat without all its occupants properly strapped into their seats. Pace knew it was risky but operated the release anyway, allowing the bright orange craft to slide down the launch rail on several rollers, falling free and plunging twenty feet into the black, boiling sea.

  The rail drop system aimed the lifeboat away from the ship and the force of the drop, brief submersion and resurfacing created enough momentum to carry the lifeboat over one hundred metres away, helped by the ship’s churning screws which added to a rapid separation of the two vessels.

  That brought them right back to the present. The explosions that had just sent their own ship to a watery grave were the result of very carefully placed demolition charges. The assault team had neutralised the crew and sunk a £100 million covert operations vessel in little under fifteen minutes. Having no base ship left to return to, their attackers would soon be just as dead as the Sea Otter’s brave crew, Pace knew, drawing a little comfort from knowledge. It was fitting that the attacking force had been too engrossed in slaying the crew to notice their own ship being hit. By the time they did, they had no time left to deactivate their own demolition charges.

  Switching on both the internal and external navigation lights, forcing back the nausea in his throat, Pace remained at the helm while Hammond closed his eyes, suddenly drained to his core.

  As the orange lifeboat battled on through the untidy, white-capped, frigid water; riding each ill-tempered wave with dogged determination, the two occupants wondered what lay ahead of them. Would they even reach the coast, through an aggravated sea littered with icebergs and slivers of calved glaciers? With their satellite phones on the way to the bottom of the sea, and with the lifeboat only fitted with a short range radio, the outlook was bleak.

  They knew where the old science base was and had been on their way to investigate the coordinates when their ship was attacked. Both men knew that even if they made it to the icy shore, the Grim Reaper was very likely to be waiting there to greet them, scythe sharp, soul bag held open in anticipation.

  ‘I think, all things considered,’ muttered Pace, ‘I would rather be back in the jungle.’

  ‘At least it can’t get any worse,’ groaned Hammond.

  Pace disagreed. There was only one way that anyone could have got near to the Sea Otter without the ship’s defences activating. The McEntire Corporation was being attacked from within.

  Continue the adventure!

  SKELETON GOLD: Dark Tide is scheduled for publication in summer 2015.

  For more information about the author, including impending new releases, please visit www.andylucasbooks.

 

 

 
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